NEW YORK — Who knew that a Panda would want to snack on a T-shirt?
Deborah Boria and Dearrick Knupp did. Partners in a new line made of bamboo fabric called Panda Snack, Boria and Knupp met about three years ago while both worked as consultants with design and merchandising experience. Boria was employed at companies such as Hanes and DKNY Legwear and Bodywear, and Knupp worked on licensing deals for Warner Bros., Disney and Levi Strauss & Co., among others.
“We had great chemistry and knew we eventually wanted to do something together,” Boria said. “The thing was, we also knew we didn’t want to jump into something just for the sake of it. We wanted to provide something new to the market, something that wasn’t out there already.”
They found their niche at a fabric trade show when a vendor showed them a children’s garment made of 100 percent bamboo.
“It was so soft it was unbelievable,” Knupp said. “We were immediately excited about it, and knew we wanted to work with it.”
The result is Panda Snack, a collection of T-shirts for women and men wholesaling from $22 for a basic tank or camisole to $54 for a polo. Ranging in colors from tangerine, teal and shell pink to basic black and white, Knupp said this collection is the beginning of a lifestyle brand. He said they will expand into categories such as lingerie, children’s wear and bedding after the line of tops launches for spring selling.
Knupp said the bamboo fabric washes the same way as cotton, but as an added bonus, there is no odor from sweating.
“The fabric is odorless and 99.5 percent resistant to bacteria,” he said.
The partners stressed that, while the fabric they use is made of bamboo and is grown without the use of pesticides or other potentially harmful agents, Panda Snack is a fashion brand.
“We aren’t marketing this line as a crunchy green kind of company, we are first and foremost a fashion company,” Boria said. “It’s just an added benefit that the fabric we are using is good for the environment.”
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Boria and Knupp plan to donate a portion of sales to the preservation of the panda, which is an endangered species. Found only in China, in the wild, it is estimated that fewer than 1,600 pandas remain.
Panda Snack will launch in better specialty stores such as Stanley Korshak in Dallas, Fred Segal in Los Angeles, Lileo in Toronto and 2KH here, which only sells organically made products. While they have not started selling the product online yet, the partners launched an informational Web site, pandasnack.com. Knupp said he expects somewhere between $3 million and $5 million in first-year wholesale volume.